Drying

It's amazing how fast the ground dries out once the warm days arrive. I've had to begin irrigating several plants, lest they turn brown before spring is halfway over, and the parts of the lawns that get the most sunlight also needed watering. All this, and the walnut tree hasn't even begun to get new leaves. It's going to be needing more water, too.

I'm also losing the battle with the foxtails. New ones sprout faster than I can pull them up. If they were easy to eat, like dandelions, I wouldn't mind, but they are bothersome plants with seeds difficult to separate, and not tasty at all. Plus the seed heads can get into animals' ears and cause infections. Other exotics that have to be pulled as quickly as possible include yellow star thistle and scotch broom, and of course the nettles that leap out and latch onto pant legs and kitty fur and anything else that passes nearby. Some nettles are edible, but I'm not sure if the species we have is among them.

A lot of the weeding will have to wait until the pollen diminishes a bit. I've been sore and achy today, as well as sneezy, and I think it's mostly the mulberry tree pollen that's causing it. I must pay each spring for the shade it provides in the summer. The best thing would be to replace it with some other species, but there are no suitable replacement trees that would grow fast enough to provide sufficient shade for at least five years.

The birds have begun their evening songs, and I'm going to go out and listen to them for a while. By the time the last woodpeckers fall silent, the frogs should have started their choral performance. Later, there might be owls, too, and maybe a flock or two of migrating waterfowl. Spring is a busy season, and somebody has to keep an ear on it. It might as well be me.